1. Field of the Invention
The invention herein relates to a bottle cap and more particularly to a bottle cap and container that facilitates the removal of a safety seal on the bottle or other container.
2. Overview of Prior Art
Bottles are a part of our everyday lives. Many times the contents of these bottles are intended to be ingested by the user. This may be in the form of solid or liquid food, or pill form such as in the case with medications and dietary supplements. In each case, the consumer must be assured that the contents of the container have not been tampered with. The manufacturers or bottlers commonly use a reinforced aluminum foil safety seal over the orifice of the bottle that must be removed after removing the bottle cap from the bottle, but before dispensing the contents. If the seal has been removed or torn, the consumer is instructed not to use the product contained therein. The safety seal must not be able to be removed and replaced or the purpose of the safety seal would not be recognized.
The safety seal must therefore be damaged or distorted if removed, yet the seal must be somewhat strong and resilient, otherwise the seal would commonly be damaged by normal handling of the container. This combination of qualities necessitates that the seal be somewhat difficult to remove. This is a problem that is especially evident for the elderly where finger dexterity and strength are reduced. Ironically, this population utilizes a great deal of medications and supplements due to the common degeneration in health with age.
The removal of the safety seal can be accomplished by, after removing the cap, plunging a sharp object, such as a knife into the center of the sealed orifice and tearing off and discarding the safety seal in pieces. This is messy and predisposes the user to contaminate the contents with small pieces of the safety seal. Since the seal is commonly made of aluminum, potential ingestion of this material could be harmful.
Many attempts have been made to provide a simple and sanitary method of removing the safety seal after inspection by removing the cap of the container. One such attempt was made by Art et al, in U.S. Pat. No. 5,090,582. Here a bottle cap is disclosed which includes a partitioned cap, there defining an upper and a lower section. A threaded section is included in the lower section to secure the cap to a bottle. The upper section includes a conical puncture means which is intended to puncture a hole in the safety seal of a container and upon rotating the cap, the seal would be cut away. A ramp is included that prevents the puncture means from rotating completely around the orifice of the container, thus providing a small portion of the seal to remain in contact with the bottle, not allowing it to fall in the bottle.
Some serious problems accompany this design. First, since the puncture means is located in the upper section, which must be open to allow, when inverted, placement over the orifice of the bottle to cut the seal, the resultant is a dust receptacle. All sorts of contaminants would settle in the open upper section and when inverted to cut the seal the user would in essence be dumping the contaminants into the bottle. Another contamination problem is with the single puncture means to puncture and then cut the seal. The disclosure shows a conical member, which would be well suited for puncturing but not for cutting. The cutting "edge" would now be the relatively large base of the cone. This would less likely cut than it would "tare" the seal away, producing small fragments of the seal material as it goes, further contaminating the contents of the container the seal is intending to protect.
A cap with a cutting device is disclosed by Huard in U.S. Pat. No. 5,148,937. Here a cap is shown with a pair of diagonal notch's removed. The resultant is a pair of spiked edges that are intended to pierce the safety seal. As before, the cap is then rotated relative to the bottle and the seal is cut away. Also as before, the spikes are exposed to the environment prior to being punctured into the orifice of the container. This means the any contaminants that are evident on the outside of the cap are now exposed to the contents of the container. Another disadvantage to the disclosed is the presence of an exposed sharp edge on the cap at all times. If it can cut through the safety seal it can potentially cut skin if grabbed in the wrong way.
As a further problem, the cutting edge in the afore mentioned disclosure does not appear to be very efficient. This is because when the projections are punctured through the seal and rotated in one direction relative to the orifice of the container, one side will be positioned in the proper angle to be a cutting edge, while the other side will be oriented away from the edge of the orifice, more as a funnel than a knife. While one side might cut, the other side will tend to "mush" the seal, making removal of the seal inefficient at best.
Numerous other attempts have been made to facilitate removal of a safety seal including a bottle specific cap as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,007,546 by Rose et al. Here a tab is used to enable the user to remove a safety strip which enabled the removal of the cap. This is an expensive solution and therefore not practical for most applications. Such a device is not intended to be used with the commonly used foil safety seal as is used throughout the industry.
Similarly, Segmuller in U.S. Pat. No. 3,661,289 disclosed a bottle cap seal with a tear off safety strip. The limitations of Rose apply here as well, even though this is somewhat simplified over Rose et al, the process still requires the part be molded onto the neck of the bottle, rather than a foil seal that is adhered to the rim of the orifice. Equally functional in purpose but the foil seal is donc so at a substantially reduced cost.
By contrast, a safety seal stripper is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,790,220 by Lloyd in which a separate apparatus is used to receive the cap and safety seal of a container and when rotated by the user, strip away the safety seal from the container. This is disclosed to be a secondary tool that is used over the cap, not also as a cap, which presents a major drawback. Cap sizes vary from product to product and even within sizes and brands of the same product. In order to be functional, this device would need to be adjustable in size, which it is not disclosed to be done, or the user would need to have a multitude of the devices on hand dependent upon the size of the orifice and cap of the container.
Another foil cutter is disclosed by Allen in U.S. Pat. No. 4,845,844. The disclosure is intended toward cutting foil from bottles with necks such as Champaign bottles. The orientation of the blades that cut the foil are in opposition to each other therefore making penetration into the orifice of a bottle virtually impossible. Modification to the device to make it functional in this regard would make it distinctly different from this disclosure.
Examples of the seal itself are disclosed by Ullman et al., in U.S. Pat. No. 4,754,890 and Han in U.S. Pat. No. 5,372,268 both which include a tab that can be grasped by the user to tear the seal away. Such a device was not uncommon in the industry for a while. The short coming is obvious in that the tab must fit comfortably under the cap of the container, thus it must be small in size. This means that it will be difficult for many individuals to grasp and pull. As previously mentioned this problem is especially evident for the elderly, who commonly require products such as medications that come in safety sealed containers.
Another cap that utilizes a safety seal is disclosed by Dubach in U.S. Pat. No. 4,869,399 in which a penetrator is used to puncture a hole in the foil which then allows the material to flow from the container into a cavity under the spout opening and then through the same to the user. One major disadvantage in this design is since the penetrator must be adjacent to the spout there is no way to know for sure if the safety seal has been broken prior to first using the container, because it cannot be easily seen by looking in the only visible orifice, the spout. This defeats the purpose of the safety seal. It could be tampered with or even removed and it would not be readily apparent to the user.
A device as disclosed by Larguia in U.S. Pat. No. 5,615,788 includes a cap that incorporates a safety seal and a paper seal. The paper seal is intended to break if the two cap structures are moved relative to one another, thus indicating that the inner seal may be tampered with. The device requires a hook that is pressed into a groove on the bottle neck to hold the internal structure of the device in place. Many bottle openings are threaded to accept a threaded cap. This device would not function because the internal structure must be rigid to the bottle, as compared to a threaded cap which must obviously rotate about the threads. Also, the actual foil seal is not viewed by the user prior to opening. The paper seal is only an indicator. This increases the likelihood of false evaluations of tampering that do not in fact exist. This causes undo wasting of the product because the user could not use the product contained therein for fear of possible tampering.
A pliable bottle cap with a foil safety seal thereunder is disclosed by Bullock, III in U.S. Pat. No. 4,739,891. Here a removable plastic cap covers the orifice of the container, the orifice covered by a safety seal. The user tears off the plastic cap and reveals the safety seal which must be removed by grasping the foil tab on the seal and pulling it off This seal is not unlike those previously disclosed by Ullman et al and Han and the same limitations as are previously listed herein are also apparent here. The Bullock, III disclosure does not disclose nor suggest a portion of the cap to be used as a device to remove the safety seal.